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360 Shortage Rumours Marketing Ploy?
Joystiq wonders out loud if the shortage rumours going around about the Xbox 360 may not just be a marketing ploy on Microsoft's part. From the article: "The bottom line: in all likelihood, you'll be able to walk into just about any store on November 22nd and obtain an Xbox 360. But all it takes is a little, good, old-fashioned FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) to drive sales through the roof and make this rumor a self-fulfilling prophecy." If this is in fact a ploy, it may be backfiring on them. Gamasutra is reporting that an analyst is downgrading his opinion of how the launch will go based on these hardware shortage rumours.
It looks like the only people who have any interest in the 360 are the hardcore current Xbox owners - probably around 10 million or so.
The 360 hardware has turned out to be shockingly weak. Although MS and 360 developers have played around with releasing high rez images for games that don't look like what the actual game running in realtime does - most shocking example has been Gears of War which looks like an average pc fps when you see it actually running.
Also almost every 360 game is running at 30fps, and some aren't even able to make that framerate. The game that was supposed to be the flagship title for the 360, PDZ, is getting trashed by people who have played it. It is remarkable that the flagship title for 360 not only looks hideous but also is generating almost hate from the people who have played it.
Something went seriously wrong with the 360 hardware design for the games to be looking this bad and have framerate issues for so little to show for it.
In the end it doesn't matter what happens this holiday season with the 360. If it sells 0 units or the ten million hardcore Xbox owners rush out and buy one all right away, the 360 isn't going to be ever break the 10-15 million range. No PS2 or GameCube owners are going to touch the machine.
The 360 just screams Dreamcast all over again.